Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 1 (2011), p. 131

The Variorum Collected Studies series exists to publish in a single volume the leading articles and essays of an individual scholar. Those articles are not produced in a fresh format with new, and continuous, pagination: the originals are simply scanned to a high standard and thus reproduced exactly as they first appeared on first publication. If the scholar has contributed influentially to the development of the discipline, then it is a boon to have much of their best work collected in a single place. In a career spanning fifty years, P. D. A. Harvey has been very influential in shaping our understanding of the rural history of medieval England.

There are 18 articles in this volume, arranged in chronological order of their subject matter. The addition of a detailed index adds considerably to the usefulness of the volume. The chronological range of Harvey’s interests is unusually wide, and he is equally at home discussing tenth-century harvest workers as he is looking at seventeenth-century estate maps. The subject matter is also eclectic, ranging from landscape history to mainstream economic history.

Harvey’s monographs – most notably those relating to the Oxfordshire manor of Cuxham, the format and uses of manorial records, and the history of maps – are deeply rooted in the primary source material. This interest and expertise in documents is strongly represented in the volume, where he explores the strengths and weaknesses of an extraordinary range of sources: manorial accounts, agricultural treatises, two estate surveys (the remarkable Rectitudines Singularum Personarum and Gerefa, and the Bolden Book), the Pipe Rolls, maps and personal seals. His analysis of the potential of medieval and early modern local records for reconstructing the English landscape, published in Landscape History in 2004, contains some salutary warnings about their shortcomings, and ought to be compulsory reading for anyone embarking upon research in the subject.

Harvey’s discussions of the primary sources are characterized by his keen intelligence, thoughtfulness, meticulousness and common sense. His willingness to dwell upon uncertainties, and to articulate areas of ignorance, rather than breezing past them, enhances the reader’s confidence in his judgements. This evenhandedness, together with a deep knowledge and understanding of the source material, elevates many of his publications to the status of works of reference.

Yet Harvey is more than just an excellent technician, as his major contributions to aspects of the economic history of medieval England reveal. His ground breaking articles on the English inflation of c.1180 to 1220, and its impact upon the management of seigniorial estates, are still highly influential 40 years after their publication, and raise challenging (and as yet unanswered) questions about the nature of the late twelfth-century economy. His three essays on the peasant land market are indispensible to anyone wishing to study this important but demanding subject. The development of an exceptionally active and localised market in small pieces of land during the thirteenth century, and the transformation after c.1350 of villein tenures into different types of copyholds and leaseholds, carried significant implications for the subsequent development of agrarian capitalism in England. Harvey sketches the broad outlines of these developments in a clear and authoritative manner, and, in his final contribution to the subject (published in 1996), he also offered a future research agenda which advocates advancing along a broad front: an interlinking of estate management, patterns of inheritance, tenurial obligations, and family structure and prosperity. These three essays exemplify the best attributes of Harvey’s career and works, and of the historian’s craft: technical excellence combined with the ability to handle complex issues and ideas.